Former Air India employee arrested for hacking the airlines website, illegally selling tickets

HIGHLIGHTS

Former employee of Air India arrested for hacking the airliners website.

Anitesh Goswami redeemed miles of Flying Returns Members.

Goswami later sold the tickets to travel and ticketing agents.

Image for representation

HIGHLIGHTS

Former employee of Air India arrested for hacking the airliners website.

Anitesh Goswami redeemed miles of Flying Returns Members.

Goswami later sold the tickets to travel and ticketing agents.

Delhi Police Cyber Crime Cell under the Economic Offences Wing today arrested a former employee of Air India for hacking the airliners website and fraudulently selling tickets. Anitesh Goswami, who hacked into the airliners website, obtained tickets by redeeming miles of members of the Flying Returns programme.

Goswami has been booked under offences of cheating, forgery and also under the Information Technology Act. He was arrested by a special team of officials who were investigating the incident. According to the police, suspects involved in the hacking were dynamic and frequently changed locations. Police officials said that Goswami who was the mastermind in the racket operated from Jodhpur.

The Delhi Police arrested Goswami from a residence in Jaipur based on a tip off from an informant. The police also recovered a laptop, several mobile phones, and several documents from the possession of Goswami.

Here's what you need to know:

Goswami, an IT expert with BCA degree, had worked in both Kingfisher Airlines and Air India.

He was well versed with the online ticket-booking system and also knew the functioning of intranet and internet based systems of Air India.

After understanding the ticketing and points or miles system of Air India, Goswami hacked into their Loyalty Plus programme website.

After hacking and gaining access to the website, Goswmai obtained admin user rights.

He used the admin rights in the internal Loyalty Plus system of Air India and also upgraded several other user IDs with admin rights.

Using these IDs he verified hundreds of dormant accounts of Frequent Flyer members by uploading fraudulently prepared KYC documents.

Goswami later used these membership accounts and the Frequent Flyer miles or points accumulated in them for booking airline tickets.

These tickets were then sold to various travel and ticketing agents based in cities like Pune, Delhi, Jaipur and Mumbai.

Police officials said that before leaving Air India Goswami did a thorough study of the airliners ticketing system.